Dental school opening mouths

State's first since 1972 a big task for tiny Midwestern University

CEO Kathleen Goeppinger is overseeing a huge expansion at the Downers Grove school.

A small health science university in the western suburbs is opening the first dental school in Illinois in more than three decades but faces a long haul to compete for top students.

Midwestern University in Downers Grove has enrolled its first class of 125 aspiring dentists for this fall, a decade after Northwestern University Dental School closed its doors. Midwestern is in the midst of an aggressive expansion, which includes an $88-million science hall that is nearly completed. A $120-million, five-story building housing a dental clinic and research space is expected to open in 2013, when the first class will start working with patients.

The school must compete against the state's only other dental schools, the University of Illinois at Chicago and Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Those state schools charge Illinois residents substantially less than Midwestern, where annual tuition of $58,437 is the highest in the Midwest.

Midwestern, which traces its history to the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, founded in 1900, is seemingly well-positioned to take advantage of rising demand nationwide for health care professionals. Unlike some better-known rivals, which rely on undergraduate and technical degrees, Midwestern specializes in graduate education, where tuition is generally higher and students have better employment prospects.

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With about 5,000 students divided between Downers Grove and a campus near Phoenix, the school offers degrees in pharmacy, clinical psychology and medicine, among others.

The dental school is a big move for Midwestern's longtime CEO, Kathleen Goeppinger, a former Carson Pirie Scott & Co. executive: Dental schools are considered money-losers, and while long-term trends are favorable, there's no shortage of dentists in Illinois.

“It's a financial risk,” says Lee Jameson, a clinical instructor at UIC's College of Dentistry and former dean of Northwestern's dental school. “The economy is volatile, and that's a risk from the standpoint of the cost to the university and the cost to the students.”

Ms. Goeppinger already has opened one dental school, on Midwestern's 147-acre, 2,725- student Glendale, Ariz., campus in 2008. With a strong balance sheet, Midwestern is financing the Downers Grove construction projects in part with nearly $160 million in bonds.

RETAIL BACKGROUND

Ms. Goeppinger, 63, became Midwestern's CEO in 1995, after a five-year stint as chairman, and led the school's expansion into Arizona the following year. She came to Midwestern from Loyola University Chicago, where she received a doctorate in international policy and was a professor of industrial relations.

Commuting between Arizona and Illinois each week, she brings a business sense honed during a 19-year career at Carson's, where she rose through the ranks to become a corporate vice-president in charge of human resources. She left in 1985, four years before the Chicago department store chain was sold.

“Midwestern's run like an enterprise more than it's run like an academic institution . . . while so many academic institutions are having trouble managing costs,” says Barry Broome, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, where Ms. Goeppinger serves as vice-chairman.

At Midwestern, her total compensation was $944,000 in 2008, the most recent year available, compared with $1.2 million for the president of the University of Chicago and $672,000 for the president of the Illinois Institute of Technology.

She will earn her money spearheading the university's latest expansion.

IN DEMAND?

The ratio of dentists to residents in Illinois is about the same as it was 10 years ago, despite the closing of Loyola's dental school in 1993 and Northwestern's eight years later, says Greg Johnson, executive director at the Illinois State Dental Society.

But Ms. Goeppinger estimates there are about 150 students each year who study out of state but end up practicing in Illinois. Long-term demand for new dentists should rise, thanks to aging baby boomers needing more dental work and a wave of retirements among current dentists, she adds.

All dental schools are struggling to control tuition increases, but the challenge is tougher for new schools, which typically charge more money, says Peter Polverini, dean of the School of Dentistry at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

After completing a four-year program, new dentists join a profession where the median income for general practitioners in 2008 was $207,000 and $342,000 for specialists, according to the Chicago-based American Dental Assn.

But, Dr. Polverini says, “when students graduate with $200,000 to $300,000 in debt, what's the payoff at the end?”